Huge Push In Brazil To Legalize File Sharing

from the hurdles-remain dept

We've discussed some interesting things happening down in Brazil when it comes to copyright. First, we've looked a few times at how the super popular technobrega music industry has thrived by embracing giving away music and using that to build up fame and business models based on selling scarcities -- such as live shows. But, perhaps more interesting has been the ongoing proposals for new copyright laws in Brazil. For example, there was the decision to buck the trend in many places and not have a notice and takedown provision like the DMCA, but only have content get taken down with a court order -- a position that shows significantly more respect for free speech rights. Separately, one recently proposed draft amazingly included penalties for hindering fair use or the public domain.

It's almost as if folks in Brazil have actually noticed how poorly set up most of the rest of the world's copyright laws are.

Last month, Brazil allowed public comment submissions on copyright, and apparently at the last minute, a large group of artists groups and consumer rights groups put together a proposal to "end" the "war on copying" (found via IP Watch). Basically, the plan has a few parts, but the big one is the idea of legalizing non-commercial file sharing in exchange for a broadband levy of 3 Reais -- or about $1.74 US. That's certainly a hell of a lot cheaper than most proposals out there.

That said... while I appreciate getting rid of "the war on copying," I do think there are some serious problems with a proposal like this. Copyright levies tend to have serious unintended consequences. They create large bureaucracies, where money collection and distribution is not always done fairly. In fact, they often tend to favor bigger name artists over smaller artists, and just having the bureaucracy creates overhead that goes to the bureaucracy, rather than the artists. On top of that, it takes away incentive for consumers to support artists directly through other creative business models, because they feel that they "already paid," via the levy. So, as it stands, I don't think this is a great solution, but it's at least a hell of a lot better than copyright law most other places -- and it's great to see a focus on actually getting past the old "copy wars."

Reader Comments

i worked on this proposal at facebook last year

and anyhtng more then 50cents CAD means( 1.74 = 2$ CAD/month) about 15-20 billion dollars/year( HOWS that for a tax thats more then ten percent of the Canadian federal budget) world wide consider the number of net accounts
at around 600 million thats 1.2 to 1.4 billion a month?

OH and look at the evil CRIA

they go the right to collect Canada's cdr levy and htey shouldn't be why?
CAUSE they haven't paid 300,000 artists in Canada and there is a 6 billion dollar lawsuit of which abut 80% of the collected levy money is part of.

YOU want fair
you put a council together that comprises of
A) one meber of the labels
B) one mmber of the distributors
C) one ip lawyer
d) one patent lawyer
E) 5 people that are chosen or elected by your country's net users or normal electorate like mps.
THESE mps cannot take donations, lobby money etc and cannot work in the field of any art for a period of ten years

gives power to the people and allows a voice for all the industry to get heard
terms could be 3-4 years and its a lot less bureaucracy then mike thinks

DONT want to pay the levy THATS ALSO OK

then you get onto an account that is DPI'd and unable to encrypt, then they can verify your not doing it.

you give that same panel above the right to look and those industry types the right to take appropriate action.

also you might give bi monthly access to a privacy commissioner to make sure those industry types are gonna play fair with this data and/or come up wiht more v\novel ways to make sure non levied accounts are not able to download.

and ill add

If you think about an old record with the album cover art on it , and want it as a collectible yo dont go get the pirated copy

You get a original. THIS is something Hollywood has been keen to destroy also on there trek through lawsuit land. get this in place and focus on people with money that want status of having the scare legit item. WHEN there is no threat they can copy for backing up so there original can collect dust and get value for resale one hundred years form now....then you get what i mean.

It's like buying a Chinese cheap pair a jeans and Levis
do you then goto a club and pick up the hot women or get the avg girl...

@7

at facebook faircopyright the CRIA sent a jerk over who after three weeks and me solving every issue just started to sound like a uber idot

thats when i stopped
2 weeks later warner takes the idea and proclaims its great but wants a net levy of somehting like 10-20$ and htat wuold raise htat sinlge label 20 billion a year

this is why we MUST MUST MUST not allow what controls such an entity of collecting this to be in there control.

EXAMPLE OF CANADA
a SINGLE CDR costs 1.00 or so
a non levied costs 50 cents
yet they claim its only a 26.7 cent levy?
ALSO
a non levied dvdr ( they dont fall under it oddly
costs 50 cents
so by cost people are breaking the law and either getting better quality OR 7 times as much data per disc.

AND seriously in Canada a 50 cent levy would amount to about
.50 times 24 million accounts
144 million a month

USA has 8 times our population net net accounts
1billion a year

UK has double Canada pop
250 million in fact 600 million accounts times 50 cents = 300 mill a year or 3.6 billion a year....
and should cover everything

and its fairly simple to make a law requiring all p2p operations submit a verifiable list of what was downloaded ( without user ids for privacy )

dont want to have stuff outside your levy being downloaded , add proxies and other country ips to ban lists

dont want your stuff downloaded dont make it available to a human being......

@10 THEN @9

right about the time you stopped looking for a way to end the problem and just decide to go and want everything for free

i believe there should be something for hard working authors actors and musicians. I DONT think 50 years is acceptable let alone ten....

apply this style of business to any other industry and it will fail so fast its not funny. THEY want a levy i want lowered terms too, thats part of the deal.

It is always even funnier when you show this thread to others and the people that whine are the ones other people think are the real idiots....HINT HINT

IF you read what i wrote the goal of having elections of real people that are hte majority of looking after it say for hlaf term of the 4 years so a 2 year term, means that they are more likely to be sympathetic to a consumer.

YOU CAN: have it so they dont own or operate any corporate entity or work for one. YOU can have control of the costs of running it ( and prey i tell me thinks this will be the way ) in regular govt mps hands and vote to increase anything would need to come there way. ALSO you can require that these elected mps NOT be associated to any of the offical parties or have been a seated mp for one. this allows them to vote for any party but they cant be part of the collective if they were a sitting mp for one.

SO like when im in office you give me huge change to go then and run for the collective so im your buddy on it. prevents that nicely. AND if you get real at this you will get a real nice working collective. THAT is far more fair.

p.s. i have a old keyboard and the keys dont always get pushed

Just so people know in Brazil, the government is considered to be on the level of rapists by the population and they all know that any tax/levy will end up financing luxurious vacations to the people in charge and be abused.

Surprisingly many still believe in the democratic process to change the government, which may happen slowly, but I am for once in favor of a bottom up approach, were people take charge of their problems and start taking action to change things.

In the U.S. that will be hard because is the bottom part that needs changing, culture changed somehow in America and now people believe in things like "zero tolerance", "punishment is better than education" etc, which is a shame.

The healthcare bill was an example of brute force approach, where people are forced to do something instead of being wooed into it.

I have been thinking a lot about catastrophes like the Katrina, why people get so weak? I saw the news of flood in England and the British seemed more capable of couping with adverse situations at least the old people there, that knew how to light a fire to keep the house warm, new how to get food and shelter while the younger generation suffered and that is the lesson, governments should be building robustness into society not trying to take care of everything but teaching people how to survive in case things go wrong all those projects from FEMA were shelved why? The best anti-catastrophe plan is to have a able population but no government seems to look at that.

With able people, things can get hard but it will be easyly dealt with, this is a cultural thing, it shocked me to see people unable to find solutions to simple problems in time of need.

But for that to happen sharing must be put were it belongs on the top of the list.

Re: Re: and ill add

Re: @10 THEN @9

"IF you read what i wrote"

I can't read what you wrote. I try....I really do. And I can read. And I see that you have written something. Yet usually about halfway through your first sentence, my eyeballs declare war on me for forcing them into this and try to stab me in the brain.

Do you have any idea how much this hurts? To have your own eyeballs try to stab you in the brain. I tried to reason with them. "C'mon eyeballs," I usually say. "You're my second favorite pair of balls on my body. I don't mean you no harm, I just want to read this guy's comment".

But do they listen? No. They just keep trying to stab my brain with oddly formed silia.

Re: @10 THEN @9

@17 @18

funny cause a 5th grader kid of a tenant here read it all out load

EVERY WORD and he could get meaning from it...
OH ya not holdignback nohitng its just sooo agressive aren't the paragraphs and paragraphs of solvng issues and getting things dne and worked out rahter then sitting on your butts waitign for a 3 strikes law to slap u.

both posters of that are shills
HI SHILLS
no grammar for you
and i dont care what you think your lost causes. you whine and sit around and dont do nothing but waste electricity and bandwidth.

ok smarty pants whats YOUR real world solutions.
fact is you dont have one and are in fact jealous that god ol me has ideas that might come to work.

funny how a hacker and pirate solves the problem for these lazy good for nothing leeches of society.

There are serious plp down here

Hi all,
There are bad politicians everywhere, that's not our (Brasil) exclusive product. Actually, there are lots of good plp working hard to address serious topics like copyright law.
If our solution ain't the best, it is certainly at least 100 years ahead of DMCA. There are some USA bills I consider fine piece of political art, but DMCA was the greatest joke ever seen. Like every bill, it demonstrates the people's positions about something, and the DMCA translates to: yo, you big companies, please continue to suck more and more money from authors at the cost of our freedom, we're ok with that. Dude, if I where USA citizen, I'd fight this DMCA "to death".
Many of the problems of a copiright law have roots on the disrupted focus of the law (from the people and the authors to favor the big labels), aggravated by wrong plp culture and lack of better moral education.

Brasil always has these choke points in their economy taxed

I highly dislike the idea of the broad band tax. I spend approximately 50% of my time in Brazil and have become very familiar with it. The way they do too many things is just like this. This is why cell phone time STILL costs 50 cents per minute and Carlos Slim is a billionaire.

Brazil is self sufficient in energy yet you pay 2X for gasoline there. That in a country where they effectively have 1/3 the salaries we do here.

Go Brazil

some times we need to learn English more and other language to understand this article / these comments. outbound gathering murah bogor Normally I do not read article on blogs, but I wish to say that this write-up very forced me to try and do so! paket gathering murah bogor I appreciate everything you are doing.